


dream walker

by Papaveri



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-05 16:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 12,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4186023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Papaveri/pseuds/Papaveri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After bouts of interrupted communication, Lyon gets in touch with them in his own way (a nicely awkward piece of summer in the middle of winter).<br/>And then, Ephraim disappears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In an hotel room, in the afternoon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merewiowing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merewiowing/gifts).



> I am here and you are becoming part of the ocean and I am always a shoreline.  
> -Kharla M. Brillo

☆

Seeing him in a dream has some sort of a nostalgic feeling to it; his shape has the familiarity of an old playground, he sways a little like a children's swing. He's wearing the shirt he used on their last day of vacation, the open brown sandals.  
When the initial jolt of happiness wanes, he almost expects him to say some sort of goodbye.  
_Goodbye see you soon we'll meet again I'll keep in touch_  
Lyon is wearing a mask (is he, maybe i just can't remember his face, or his voice), but he feels his smile behind it.

"Hello, Ephraim,” he says. (it is me, that's not his voice, it's too neutral, too vague).  
“Lyon! Lyon,” managing words in a dream is hard, almost tiring; he has something on the tip of his tongue constantly, and only lets out a fraction of what he wants to say (i want to talk to you properly, god) “Why didn't you... You could have said something earlier! You could have written, or called, or...!”  
(you could, right?)  
(but i'm so happy to see you)  
“I wonder. What I can and cannot do. I'm sorry,” he says. His neck curves a little and his smile drops slightly, “but you know you _restrict_ me.”  
“Then why isn't my sister here? She's more attentive, she could have...”  
“ I really, really wanted to see you.”  
(this means you're near. this means you're near)

☆


	2. The house on the hill

***

When she got up to the entrance of the hotel, Lyon was catching his breath against the portico, his hair a bit disheveled and his sunglasses lower than they should be.  
“God, you're not twelve anymore! Did you expect me to run after you both?”, Eirika said. She looked around her; she had a moment of hesitation where she doubted whether she should put her hand on Lyon's shoulder, _we're not twelve anymore_. “Are you okay?”  
“Yeah. Just”, Lyon laughed. His laughter was always breezy, the sound in it muffled; when they were children, he had some kind of problem in his lungs, “give me a second.”  
When Ephraim came down from the hotel building to them, she threw the bag with the towels at him; it almost splashed against his chest, wet and full of sand, and cut his words of celebration in half.  
“Hey, what was that for?”  
“You left me all your stuff to carry! You big jerk.”  
Lyon kept laughing softly, a gentle background to them, and pushed his sunglasses up again before speaking.  
“For someone from a small town, you get bored so easily”, Ephraim scoffed when he heard him and started a sentence about it not being fair, _you won't even let me celebrate, come on_ , but Lyon cut him with a smile and a tinge of apology in his words. “I think... I want to show you something.”  
It looked as if he could barely contain what he was saying, pride splashing in his smile and his chest still rising and going down faster than it should (he had adjusted his sunglasses, though, so his expression wasn't as clear as it could have).   
“I need you to say you want to, though. And I'll show you tonight.”  
“Do you have to be so cryptic?”  
(After a bit of insisting, Lyon said it was something like lucid dreaming, something he had started learning after his father, something that sounded almost tangibly cold, but that had to be the afternoon air blowing on her sweat; Eirika said she was alright with it, her voice a bit lower than Ephraim's)

***

Important morning routines: she wakes up and puts the coffee pot on the stove, the old moka Forde got them and actually serves three people when full; she cuts the bread, or the leftover almond cake that seems to appear on their cabinets on its own; she makes her tea with the herbs drying on the window, following the recipe pinned on the fridge (for family protection). In winter, she gets her housecoat when she starts feeling the bite of the wind coming from the open windows and rubs her hands together. Then, when her body has set (completely waken up, shaken off the cobwebs of dreams still stuck to her), Eirika goes wake up her brother. She knocks on the door twice but doesn't wait for a reply to enter the room: her brother grumbles (except on summer) and throws her a pillow.  
This morning, Ephraim has waken up before she did. She heard the chime of the bells hanging from the door, like some kind of warning, and his muted, sheepish footsteps around the house, dotted with stops that sounded almost doubtful. She waited a bit before following (she understood from the rhythm of his steps, from the metallic sound of pans from the kitchen, the sudden silence; _let him put a bit of order into his thoughts first, let the worry trickle out of yourself_ ).  
Yet the sight of him in the kitchen is deeply, deeply calming: it's usually a _good morning_ without looking the other in the eye, while she pours his coffee and stirs sugar in her tea, but Ephraim turns when he hears her and the cold light catches in his hair and dulls his skin, still somewhat reddish. He smiles (it's a little gesture, closer to a twitch).  
“You couldn't sleep?” she asks, going for the ingredients for her tea (Ephraim is nice but forgetful).  
“I dreamed of Lyon today.”  
This time the doubt she gets from the sounds he's making (his words, his tapping on the counter) is clear and yet has the yellow tinge of joy, almost visible.  
She unconsciously tightens the grip on the stems of lavender.  
It's been a year and a half, and at this point she wasn't expecting anything (no letters, no calls, no messages of any kind), but that singular ( _I dreamed_ ) kind of stings.

“You know this probably means he's going to visit soon, right?” he says.   
When he woke up, Ephraim was almost expecting to see the white ceiling of the hotel instead of their cream-colored one, the little chandelier with the light bulbs shaped like candles, hear his sister breathing right besides him on their cheap double bed. He was almost expecting to hear the sea (Eirika keeps a seashell on the windowsill, a dull pink, spiky souvenir from the beach, but when he brought it to his ear he could only make up some kind of muffled howling, like a whirlwind trapped on that thing).   
“This with the dreams really tired him, thought,” Eirika says. “It might take him a while.”   
_I don't mind_.  
Because with the potential of Lyon's closeness, Ephraim feels a little spike of inadequacy; in his memories, Lyon is the boy from the room next to theirs, on vacation with his father, with the white shirts and the smell of magic (he smelt like sparkling water, fresh and tingly; he's sure he was the first proper mage he had near him) from the big city. He associates him with the tranquil sameness of hotel rooms, the strange routine and the chemical taste of sunblock, controlled and peculiar, the steadfast, childish knowledge that the hotel will be always there.  
(They met Lyon when they were little and saw him only on summer, the fact that he's dreamed of him in winter pushes him even farther from his safe, ideal place; he needs time to adapt is all.)  
“It kinda... I'm not really sure what to make of it. I was half expecting to not hear from him again, I guess?” Eirika laughs. “But all in all, I'm happy! I knew he wasn't angry.”  
(Now that she mentions it, Ephraim recalls it.  
 _I'm sorry we're not going back here, but we'll call you and all_. Lyons face moved in a way he didn't really understand.) 

To be fair, Lyon has been in her dreams only once. He appeared so clearly she could almost see the sunburn flaring on his skin, across his nose, on the arch of his feet, through his shirt. When he had tried to talk, his voice had boomed unexpectedly, and he had covered his mouth and furrowed.  
“I'm not sure it should go like that,” he had said.  
She remembered little else.  
The next day, Lyon felt ill (he still went out to meet them, but his legs were wobbly and his skin pale and cold, almost unnervingly silky), and they decided not to try it again, not with her alone.   
Lyon had said it was okay when Ephraim was there. Apparently it was exhausting, tying three dreams together, but he could keep himself together better in that case; there was a dissonance to her because _keeping himself together better_ meant his hands becoming blurry, his expression unreadable, liquid and wavy like a reflection on a muddy lake, his voice dimming and flashing at times like a dying fire.   
When they had tried reaching him after their last vacation, he had answered the first couple calls and then, suddenly, he left them with the short, shrill, accusing tones of the unanswered telephone (again and again and again); when Ephraim tells her of his dream, she smiles and has the impulse of going through her herbs again, trying to remember the proper change for the recipe.  
Chamomile, chamomile.  
For loved ones, for protection. 

The dream repeats several times. It's like an out-of-sync rehearsal; each time, Ephraim manages to speak more, more clearly, steadier, and Lyon says progressively less.   
He explained how this worked, Ephraim doesn't remember.  
“Hello, Ephraim.”  
“I really, really want to see you.”  
His face is a dark whirl and his hands hang low, his fingers crossed, his sandals mute on the wooden floor he cannot still place; discomfort bled into his initial happiness like molten wax, slow and burning and sticky, and the last dream makes him wake up breathless.  
“See you soon.”  
(And still there's something so calming about his voice, like a thunderstorm raging outside a room).  
It's like a promise and a plea at the same time, his voice pierces the soft veil of vapor between them; Ephraim recognizes Eirika's only trick, the magical teas she learned from their mother, but can't really tell who's the one surrounded by it.

She follows the important morning routines: she wakes up and puts the leftover coffee from yesterday on the stove; she cuts the bread, no almond cake or anything of the sort lately; she makes her tea with the herbs drying on the window, following the recipe pinned on the fridge (for the protection of loved ones; her tea base is almost over, and makes a note to buy one when she gets to town). She gets her housecoat when she starts feeling the bite of the wind coming from the open windows and rubs her hands together. Then, when her body has set (completely waken up, tried to remember something of last night's dream), Eirika goes wake up her brother. She knocks on the door twice but doesn't wait for a reply to enter the room.  
The bells on their door chime and the morning light from the corridor cuts into their beds like a knife.   
Ephraim is not there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The working title for this thing was "Boys, come back to me", as in the Mawaru Penguindrum opening. But in the end I thought something with casual lowercase looked better.
> 
> This was a piece of work! I'll talk more about it when it's finished, because I don't want to spoil it. I hope the way I decided to post it isn't too much of a hassle but I really wanted to keep dreams and reality... visibly separate. Count this and the short thingy before as a single unit!
> 
> I'll update this every day, since it's finished. Thanks for reading!


	3. Downtown

***

They wandered around in the hotel, eerie and empty and distorted like the safest haunted house; Eirika liked sitting on the floor near the entrance and close her eyes, unable to contain the half excited, half scared smile of horror movies.  
And Lyon (the dressed shadow that was Lyon, his voice strange and echoing and gentle) was always there. He spoke in short sentences that felt fitting with the way she seemed to be unable to ask about what she really wanted to know, a part of her brain sure of that dreamy logic that had erased any other resident in the hotel, that made the garden go on and on, the line of the horizon dotted with flowers.  
During the day, Lyon was tired but exulting, and explained the basics to them the best he could with words that where too vibrating for the whispers that gave them substance.  
Being there and not being there, keeping the line between dream and reality blurry enough as to not wake up. Appearing like a shadow because they didn't know _everything_ about him ( _but that's not a bad thing, it's normal, you can't possibly know that about anyone_ ).  
“Then how do we look? Me and Eirika?”  
Lyon blinked behind his sunglasses; the dark lenses gave his eyes a weird shade of brown, and sometimes reflected a colorful shadow on his cheeks. He had the same look when he lost at chess with Ephraim, when he learned about Eirika's teas.  
“I see you just fine.”

***

“I'm sorry I haven't been able to call you,” Eirika says, lies. Her mobile is old enough she can hear the faint echo of her words and twists the closest empty tea bag on her free hand. It crunches and crumples under her fingers. “I'll tell you next time, when I go get groceries. We can go together.”  
“Yeah, I hope so! Are you busy with the tea thing? I can go help you if you want!”  
Kyle has been easier to keep where she wants him, calm and unknowing, because he just answers, never calls (Ephraim left his phone on the doorway, untouched, almost like a don't look for me note), but Tana is like a barrage of arrows she must keep avoiding; she dances around the questions, she works with her words to avoid lying as much as she can.  
“No, I'm okay, it's been a slow month. Don't worry.”  
( _Don't worry don't worry please don't worry._ )  
“Okay! Just tell me if you need anything, alright?”  
It's harder to read her tone on the phone and it makes her slightly anxious.  
“Thanks.” She nods out of habit. “Bye, then.”  
“See you!”  
Eirika inhales, balls her hands into fists, clutching the phone on the kitchen counter. Her fingers have become brown with the powdery stains of the tea base, and her stomach seems to drop when she realizes she's almost done with the week orders.  
She's had the feeling she's been carrying around the shadow of her brother's disappearance all week long, like a recent tattoo on her back, hidden and pulsating. When she finally got to tend the plants her brother had left behind, in the backyard, she froze with a water can that felt in her hand like a recently used gun, endlessly heavy and burning. When she went down to town, to deliver and send her tea orders, she felt everyone staring, her customers looking past her expecting to see someone else.  
( _But they don't know him you shouldn't worry._ )  
And at night, she's been going through the ads for mages in the newspapers that actually have them (theirs is a small town with little demand, and the people in the ads are in close cities or solitary houses like hers): their decorative effects sparkled around her room, swirling around her and tousling her hair like gusts of wind, writing momentary messages in the hair with glittery lettering. She ignored them and picked apart the descriptions as if dissecting an animal: some of them fill her with a mix of pride and wariness, the ones selling protective spells and charms. She's had a couple of those mages going to her house and asking her for her recipes, but she doesn't recognizes any of the faces, the smiles on the newspapers new enough as to seem real.  
None of them have caught her attention and she's not sure if it had anything to do with the coiling feeling in her gut that she shouldn't involve someone else.  
She finishes packing her tea mixes.  
It's the ninth time she leaves the house saying nothing when she closes the door.

The person with the magical tea is late.  
They had a quaint little webpage, with photographs of her mixes and short blurbs on the effects they were supposed to have, and a reference address that ended up being usefully close to her new office; the webpage stated that mixes would be delivered on hand to people who were near enough. When she discovered it, L'Arachel was elated: while there isn't something quite as exciting as being _the one mage_ in a new town, it also meant she wasn't going to have anyone for sporty rivalries or close confidences, the people flocking to her because she was the only option. She wanted to meet the kind of person who still practiced such ancient magic in a time where you could buy something similar in supermarkets, probably an old man with the air of knowledge about him, or a charming lady with an enormous backyard garden.  
When the bell rings (a ring followed by two knocks, directly on her door; she remembers she now lives in a house, not in an apartment building), L'Arachel skips around her unpacked boxes and straightens her dress.

The woman at the door is her age and Eirika's never seen her before. She has heir hair up in a bun and her dress makes her look sort of boxy, the hems cutting right above her knees and elbows in straight lines. She's barefoot even if it's cold oustide.  
She smiles at her.  
“You're... L'Arachel, right? Here's your tea,” she says, handing her the bag. “The brewing instructions are--”  
“You make them yourself, right?” the woman chimes. “I wasn't expecting such a young person doing such outdated magic, it's great! Oh, sorry for interrupting you, I'm just really happy to meet another mage so soon.”  
The stress of the last days turns what would have been a short laugh into a slightly slanted smile, but it's the woman's words that cut her usual 'thank you' and 'don't worry'. She has to swallow the question that sparks at the back of her throat.  
“I'm not a mage, really. It's the person who brews the tea that does most of the magic. The herbs are just herbs...”  
“But that _is_ magic! It's not lesser just because it's based on faith. Saying you're not a mage is like saying I'm not!”  
( _Then she's not like Lyon, then she can't help me_ )  
“Nice to meet a fellow mage, then,” she tries to start again. “I have some more deliveries to make. I hope moving is not too hard on you. Please try another of our teas anytime, thank you.”  
The woman waves at her and goes back inside her house, but she can hear the door opening again when she gets back on her bike.  
“Hey! Can I ask you what's your name?”  
She gets close to the doorstep again.  
“It's Eirika.”  
“That's a beautiful name! I'm L'Arachel.”  
The woman shakes her hand firmly and warmly, with a grip like biting into an apple; short, crisp, sweet.

There's a part of L'Arachel that wishes she had got the old wise man or the lady with the garden (the other part is going back to the slight winter redness in Eirika's cheeks, to the muffled click of her long earrings on her scarf).  
She rubs her own lucky coin between her hands, old and golden like prayers ( _that's part of the spell_ ), before starting to write.

Her phone lights up in the dark. Eirika shuffles from the sofa (tonight it's gotten hard to sleep besides an empty bed, and the smell and atmosphere of the living room, cramped and smoky, comforts her like a blanket).  
The new mail in her inbox has a strange format:

Dear Eirika,  
I hope this does not come off as too forward, but I would really love to learn more about you and your teas. I promise I will not ask you for the recipes (I do not work with protective charms, do not worry!), but I can tell you about my magic in return. I also want to know more about this town of ours.  
We mages must be proud of the trade and stick together!

I also would like to order a 250 g bag of For Friends.

Your neighbor,

L'Arachel.

P.S: The For Home tea is divine!

Eirika blinks goes through the text again, and the initial confusion melts down into something warm and slightly uncomfortable. The town is still almost forbidden territory, her brother's absence like a fence around it, and she only wants to step there when she absolutely cannot avoid it.  
Even then, she gets off the sofa and turns on the kitchen lights.  
(She follows her gut instinct even though she understands it's wrong, she writes a short response asking L'Arachel to come meet her home in two days.  
She needs some time to prepare, she promised Tana she'll go for groceries with her, but  
“Let me be a bit too forward too.”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Magic!  
> The magic system of sorts I used for this is influenced by the one in the game (I'm thinking the bit where Natasha and Knoll discuss light magic being faith-based and dark magic being knowledge-based), and the magic system my friend Blue came up with for a roleplay forum of hers. I also added some things here and there, though!
> 
> Originally I wanted Tana to appear way more in this chapter, but I wanted dream walker to feel sort of... insular, with few characters, so I had to leave her out :( Maybe next fic?
> 
> No dream sequence this time! I hope you liked it anyway, thanks for reading!


	4. Eirika's kitchen

***

When he wanted to know more about the dream walking, to get to specific details, Lyon got a strange look in his eyes, a sudden cloudiness in his expression (as if he had something written on his gaze, dark ink over his clear iris: 'why would you want to know?').  
“It's really hard to do. You have to know the... the method fully, you have to really understand, it's not like your mother's teas. You you can do a lot of things with it, really, but I'm just starting.”  
It was nice seeing him at night too, when they asked, even if his shape was sort of dim and his voice had a weird feeling to it, like he was stepping on dead leaves with his words, as if it came out an old TV, mixed with static and white noise. Once Lyon got better at it, they walked underwater and took seashells they would sometimes find on the beach the next day, and Lyon beamed up when Eirika laughed with her mix of surprise and happiness when he gave them to her like some kind of treasure.  
“For this I still need you to be there with me, though! Soon enough I'll be able to really surprise you.”  
But it was already a trick that couldn't possibly get old, but Ephraim didn't really laugh.  
On his hand, the seashell had almost an ethereal weight; no matter how small and silly the little changes, it always took him a moment to accept them.  
(On Lyon magic seemed much more strange and violent than in the soft vapor of his mother's teas; that didn't count as magic, there were no mages in his family.)

***

Even though it's not the luxurious splash of green over the hill she imagined, Eirika does have a little garden; the small flowers in it dot the earth like miniature fireworks, just under a window full of drying herbs. L'Arachel looks at it while she knocks on the door, ignoring the electric bell on the side.   
Eirika fits on her house as if it was built thinking about her (but the wooden floor creaks a bit under her feet, revealing age, and Eirika moves so silently): her red shirt seems to melt into the warm browns and whites of the furniture and her earrings and necklace are the same faded golden-copper color of the door hinges, of the metallic boxes where she seems to keep her ingredients, of the sound of the bells she can hear around the house. She does not need to look at the utensils she grabs around the kitchen, and L'Arachel looks at her back while swinging her legs a little on the chair.  
“This place is just like I imagined it to be,” she tells her. “It's so...”  
She realizes mid-sentence that she's probably going to sound like the big city girl she is, and leaves the words in the air so she can keep just the refinement of it and not the ignorance; she clasps her hands together and her rings click a little against each other.  
“You've just seen the living room and the kitchen, though.” Eirika comes with a little tray carrying just the teapot and two cups. “I'm out of cookies right now, but I think I can get you some almond cake if you want?”  
“That would be lovely!”  
She's still preparing the conversation a bit, she needs her rummaging through the kitchen a bit more (especially since she's said that about seeing only the living room and the kitchen, _was that a promise, an invitation?_ )

“You said your magic worked like mine yesterday,” she starts. Maybe she gets a little more from L'Arachel. She's been thinking about it, maybe she _can_ help. “But I don't really do anything with the tea. It might be the earth...”  
“It might be! But protective charms and spells don't work if the person preparing them doesn't believe in them, so you _do_ something.” L'Arachel stirs her tea and takes a tentative sip of it (she didn't use any special mix for it, she just added some cinnamon and dried raspberries to the tea base, a nice, sure-fire recipe). “I do luck charms.”  
“Luck charms?”  
“Yes! They're really popular in the city, especially handmade like mine.” There's a sort of familiar tinge of pride in her voice and Eirika smiles. “I do put a spell on them, but they don't work really well if you don't believe they will, so it's pretty much the same. Ah, but I wanted to ask you about your spells... I guess we don't work with the same stuff.”  
“My mother used spells for her tea, I think. Hers were stronger than mine, they could even cure minor illness. But I don't seem to be able to remember the words for the spells... I keep her books, though.”  
( _Not all of them, Lyon still has one_ , the thought is sudden and pungent, soft like biting into rotten fruit; he's been like a thorn on the back of her neck since she met Tana, even though it was easier to manage the conversation in person. _Ephraim is just really busy, he's reading up on this place he wants to go_.)  
“Oh, can I see? I promise I won't try to take your job from you!”  
“If you keep promising that you sound even more suspicious.”  
She allows herself a little joke before getting the books, to get bitter words out of her tongue before they get there. The old notebooks her mother compiled sit on the big shelf in the living room, small blots of brown among the colorful spines of her novels and cookbooks and Ephraim's gardening manuals and diaries. She's been going through them on the last days, hoping that the small magical words stick to her and help her _understand_ , understand like she needs to to work actual magic, to call Lyon or Ephraim or something like they did with the seashells or get answers or _anything, anything_ , but her mother's curly handwriting twists around her instead of staying in her mind.   
While L'Arachel goes through the notebooks, she blurts out the question that's been clashing against her teeth since she opened the door.  
“Do you know anything about dream walking?”  
L'Arachel looks at her as if she just said a bad word (the patchy information she's been able to find on the internet pops on her mind, the overpriced books, the myriad of rumors).  
“Just really basic things,” she says, not really meeting her eyes, going back to the notebooks. “Everyone... everyone kind of does, but I don't know any specialist on it. Why...” She closes the notebook this time. Eirika realizes she's wearing a lot of rings. “How come you ask about something like that?”  
“I... I need to know. It's nothing serious, don't worry, but I wanted to make sure.” ( _If it isn't someone close, I can afford to involve her_ ). “Would your... Never mind.”

Something catches on Eirika's eyelashes like gray snow, and her expression becomes muddy for an instant. When she blinks, she wipes it away, and shines a smile again (when she smiles, her gaze softens so much she looks younger, but she never shows any teeth; all in all it's a contained gesture, more controlled than her soft bouts of laughter).  
But the subject of dream walking seems to have stuck to her voice, and the attempts at casual conversation don't seem to flow as well as they did: dream walking is a magic like a tamed lion you have to keep on a chain, and L'Arachel notices the shadow of it when Eirika tells her about her birthday and her favorite shops, about the tea base and the almond cake, about the way she tends to the plants; she's a bit vague on the last point, her voice more like a murmur.  
L'Arachel knows she shouldn't stay for dinner, and refuses Eirika's offer of going back to town with her because her tone shifts awkwardly in the middle of the sentence.  
“It's okay, it's not that far!” She can see the lights of the town clearly from there, and going down the hill will be easier than going up like she did before.  
Eirika lets out a couple short sighs that are meant to be a chuckle.  
And then, L'Arachel reaches in her pocket for her lucky coin and grabs her hand, pressing it against her palms.  
“You'll give it back next time,” she tells her. “But I want to lend you this. For the notebooks. So it helps you in... something I'm sure you don't need the dream walking for.”  
(Dream walking is like skipping along the teeth of a beast and _what if it swallows her_ , with her small shoulders and her round eyes).  
After a moment, Eirika gives her a short squeeze; she can feel every pattern of the coin on her skin.  
“Thanks.”

She brews a bit more of her tea, she puts the coin on Ephraim's pillow.


	5. On the beach, at daybreak

☆

Every color looks like a shade of pale yellow or blue: Lyon's shadow looks like spilled watercolor water, ready to swallow them both. Eirika can't seem to focus on his face properly but she can make out the shape of his mouth so clearly it looks uncanny in a dream.  
“Where is Ephraim?”  
She winces when he starts to speak, expecting a boom so painful it's a miracle it won't wake her up, but his voice sounds normal, nice and soft like the sand under her feet, almost confused. He says something more, but it's so low she can't hear it over the waves.  
(maybe i imagined it, you're not supposed to mishear things here – how dare you, how dare you, how dare you, how)  
“I wanted to ask you the same thing. He said he--”  
 _dreamed of you_ but the words don't come out. Lyon's nose wrinkles and his shadow trembles like a puddle.  
(it looks like i could sink into it)  
(are you threatening me?)   
(you wouldn't, you wouldn't, you really would never)  
“That's an ugly thing to imply,” he says. The sound takes a while to get out of his mouth, as if it was playing out of a speaker and not getting out from his vocal chords. “Do you _really_ think something like that about _me_? ”   
(but if it isn't you then)  
“You haven't contacted us in all this time, we couldn't even reach you! And when you do get in touch he--”  
“How can you say that?” His mouth becomes a blur too. She's never seen him so distorted, his shadow on the sand the only guideline of his shape; the yellows and blues around him start pulsating and dimming. “Aren't you even a bit happy-- How can you?”  
The sentence cuts awkwardly, the words seem to disappear from his voice altogether.  
(this isn't him this can't be him)  
“Eirika. Eirika.”

☆

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ends with a dream sequence, which is not ideal, I think! But the next is really long and will be cut in three parts already, I didn't want to cut it up in four. I'm... not the best at planning these but I hope it's being interesting to read, haha.
> 
> Eirika's house is based on my grandma's house in Italy. It's actually an apartment but we have a chimney and all, so it's pretty cozy! The kitchen in particular has also some stuff from the house I lived in while I was in England, though.
> 
> Thanks for reading, as always!


	6. Winter locations

***

Time was supposed to stop for a while; as she had been told, by magazines and books and stories, it was supposed to be a bit of the day that went slower, but the soft tissue around the present box unwrapped at an alarming speed, a pink rush between Eirika's tanned fingers.  
(Eirika and Ephraim's birthday is in spring, a celebration soaked in rain and presents that go in pairs, matching shoes and matching bracelets, sets of games and oddly neutral garments; Lyon's is in winter, a polite date that doesn't come too close to the end of the year or any other celebration.)  
Whatever it was it would be kind of dulled down by Ephraim's accident earlier that day; his box sat on his bed, untouched, and Lyon eyed it from time to time.  
“I wish I could give it to you both at the same time”, he said. Lyon was the first boy who wasn't her brother to be alone on a room Eirika called hers. “But dad and I have to go back sooner this year, and it's your sixteenth...”  
There was something with an unclear definition on his eyes, almost like disappointment.   
In the end, Eirika brought both boxes to the hospital; the cast on Ephraim's leg didn't let him try on his new shoes.

***

Eirika inhales sharply when she wakes up, breaking out of sleep as if she broke out of deep water, and feels her hair damp and heavy; there's a vague vapor floating in the room, a fine, almost invisible morning mist. She's seen that kind of mist only once, when her mother's tea managed to wipe away Ephraim's fever when he was little, but it was more like a bluish cloud that smelled of lavender and filled her lungs like cotton.   
The dream ended almost abruptly when Lyon called for her, his voice so clear she felt he could be in her room (that would be calming, that would be calming, if she could see him). She stays in bed for a moment, still, and reaches for the coin on her brother's pillow. It's slightly warm, even in the winter air.  
Magic overwhelms her; she feels a bit like crying.

The way her pocket feels empty without the lucky coin is just another thing on L'Arachel, who still hasn't got used to her new town. Everything outside her house seems to end abruptly; the city center, lined with a mix of hair salons with open, white walls and clean interior and shops that look old as the churches, limits on half-ruined walls, and from there there seems to be nothing but highways and sunflower fields, with flowers taller than her; the train station is close to the residential area where she lives, the ancient, wooden train cutting all traffic for a couple minutes each hour and a half.  
There are no railroad crossings where she comes from and she's still thrilled when she has to wait on them; she likes the moment when the train is passing, when the old carriages, full of graffiti, block her view like a theater curtain. Sometimes the view changes, an old lady appears from a street she couldn't see, a car has parked up ahead.  
This time, she sees Eirika on her bike. It seems to take her a moment to gaze back, but when she does, she smiles (doesn't wave, though, her hands firm on the bike's handles).  
“This must be my lucky coin doing her work!”, she says, reaching up to her. Eirika looks around for a second and then gets off her bike.  
“Maybe”, she shows her the coin; she seems to have kept it on her hand, and it has left a round, red mark on her palm. “In fact, I was going to see if I could catch you at home.”  
(The luck on the coin doesn't go both ways, luck spells don't work like that, but for a moment she thinks it does, it does, she created something extraordinary and it makes her lucky too, she crosses her hands on her back and has to keep her smile from spreading further).  
“You do work from there, right?”  
( _A bit of a disappointment_ )  
“Not yet, but yes. Do you need something? I can make you a charm which is as good as the coin, no sweat!”

Eirika toys with the coin a bit.   
( _Yes I do, I do need something if it's going to work like that_ ).  
“Do you... really not know anything about dream walking?”  
She doesn't want to let anything else out, for the moment, and the way L'Arachel's smile drops when she finishes her question is the reason why. She shouldn't involve anyone else, she's going to get the help she needs as cleanly as possible and be done with everything.   
(And it's not as if she understands it completely; she _guesses_ it must be the same principle, that Lyon spirited her brother away as they did with the seashells some time ago, because Ephraim left his phone, his shoes, everything, _he wouldn't do that but neither would he, right?_ )   
“I don't. I'm sorry I can't help you directly with that, but it's really a dangerous thing. Didn't the coin help?”  
“A bit, yes. Thank you.”  
But luck alone isn't going to keep her going.  
“Then you can keep it!”   
L'Arachel's smile is back on her lips, wider than before (she wore her hair up in a bun when she met her but today she's let it down, and it curls around her shoulders, around the neck of her jacket; it gives her an air of familiarity that deep, deep down is soft and sweet).  
“What good would I be if I was happy with just a bit? My magic can definitely do that, just you see. When you get what you wanted, you give it back.”  
Luck alone isn't going to keep her going.   
But she clutches the coin in her hands, and she puts it on her brother's pillow, every night, every night.

L'Arachel tries to do her own investigation, but nothing turns up; dream walking is obscure, a hidden family knowledge people don't share openly, and the books for it have elegant, spartan covers with simple titles and sky-high prices. Rennac can't get her information as fast as she'd like; her network of city mages, all people who work in her field, either refuse to even broach the topic or have no idea of it at all.   
She doesn't try to find anything on Eirika herself.


	7. Ephraim's places, at indescribable times

☆

The voice sounds almost like the murmur of waves she can hear in the distance, has an algae-like quality: it slides around her, grazing her skin, green and undulating.  
Eirika can't see Lyon this time; it's a dream, but she feels the depths of water in the pit of her stomach.  
“What are you trying to do?”

☆

☆

“Stop doing this.”  
She recognizes the little room of the hotel, with the shiny wooden floor and the milky white linen covers dotted with small flowers. The sunset through the window is like a fixed photograph with unmoving clouds and a misty sun.  
“I need you to tell me. Please tell me.”  
(what do you want to know?)

☆

“I really wanted to see you.”  
The place gives her a jolt; she can't turn around in this kind of dreams, but knows the hotel is right behind her, the way going up to it snaking in front of her. There is a fallen bike along the second curve of the path, the sharpest; one of the tires is still spinning.  
(but not like this, not like this)

☆


	8. Winter locations, continued

L'Arachel is curious about the dream walking and Eirika, as much as she was about the needs of her customers when she was in the city.  
Her intuition never failed, and her charms never backed anything dangerous or bad, even with customers that pleaded with a pale face, refusing to detail anything, and then got back with flowers for her.  
( _I hope I get flowers this time too_ )  
But there's something about her expression, about the way she softens the words to make them palatable, about her refusals, something that smothers her curiosity.  
She doesn't look up anything. She trusts her, she trusts her.

The weight of her brother disappearance is starting to slip off Eirika's shoulders; she feels guilty when she realizes this, when she discovers she doesn't need to wipe her eyes while chopping herbs, she doesn't need to check on his gardening manuals anymore, the plants seem to have regained their vigor.  
When she discovers it's not that hard to go downtown anymore.  
Even though she still goes grocery shopping with Tana (when she asks about Ephraim the question bits at her so hard she thinks it's going to draw blood), she's been meeting with L'Arachel every now and again. The coin seems to have stopped working (three dreams and then nothing), but every time she tries to give it back, L'Arachel refuses.  
“You have to keep it until you get what you want.”  
( _This is for luck, it doesn't grant wishes_ )  
Amid the dreams, L'Arachel becomes part of her routine. On her free days, she goes up the hill to have lunch with her, at home, and Eirika cooks for two again.  
She doesn't ever bring up the dream walking, not even when Lyon's voice is fresh on her eardrums like salt.

L'Arachel thinks she should ask her, talk to her, tell her.  
(So many things, about the dream walking, about the new charms she gives her and takes back the next day, about her first customer and the sudden cold, about her, about her...)  
It eats her up from the inside, almost in a literal sense: suspicion is a thing with teeth, chewing on her cheeks if she doesn't let it out or squash it.  
And today, she speaks.  
“What did you need the coin for? Or the dream walking?”

Eirka realizes she's been waiting for that question for ages (it's not been so long since she's met L'Arachel but she's memorized the shape of her lips and something inside her has been hoping for those words), but when she opens her mouth the words come out strangled. They've been sitting on her throat enough to scrap against her and bring tears to her eyes ( _not her, don't let me involve anyone else_ ), and they flow like a stream in spring.  
She tells her about Lyon and about Ephraim and about the dreams and about the mist from her teas like a tangible warning and about the silence, the silence ( _I couldn't stand the silence, the knife so loud against the kitchen counter_ ).  
When she stops speaking, Eirika closes her eyes and breathes deeply.  
( _This is unfair, this is unfair_ ).

L'Arachel feels her own words dimming under Eirika's, her story like a hungry animal devouring any sort of pre-planned answer she might have had. She starts crying, but her sentences don't have any joints she can use to insert some alleviating word; her story is a rock she must let go all at once, hard as it might be to watch, and she stays there.  
When she stops speaking, L'Arachel grabs her hands like she did when she handed her the coin.  
“You're so brave”, this is something she deserves. “And I promise I'll help you as much as I--”  
“You didn't want to get involved with dream walking, and I'm not going to force you.”  
L'Arachel lets silence ease Eirika. The strength in her eyes hasn't liquified even if her voice is a bit unsteady, but she needs the spikes around her words to go down a little. Then, she starts again.  
“I promise I'll help you as much as I can.”  
Eirika wipes her last tears away with a smile, murmurs a “thank you” soft as a caress (she really wants to touch her hair, tell her that everything is going to be alright, _I'm here, I'm here_ ; the words are a bit empty but her touch would be meaningful. _I'm here, I'm here_ ).

L'Arachel goes home in the late afternoon, and her hand lingers on hers for a bit when she goes. Once she's alone, Eirika feels the weight of every breath she takes and falls on the sofa, in her little cozy corner; she's never had any dreams on the naps she's taken there, the empty darkness a comforting thought.  
When she focuses on her surroundings again, she notices a small scrap of paper on one of the shelves, a white speck on the brown. The writing looks rushed, the letters too close to each other, but the handwriting is tidy, a bit too big.  


_"Ive found it I promised"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this sounds more ominous on its own.
> 
> The town in this is also based on the town I'm from, in Italy. I really wanted to write that railroad crossing all my life, it's so cool! Now I live in a big city and there are like, no railroad crossing, and I understand why (they're dangerous and cumbersome for traffic) but they have this romantic allure...
> 
> The dream sequences in this chapter were my favorite to write, especially their settings.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	9. Train stations, bus stops

***

“So... it doesn't work if we're that far.”  
“No, not really.”  
“It's not impossible, though, right? You just need to get better at it.”  
With the years, Lyon's laughter had gotten fuller, his voice rushing into once breathy syllables, but it still worked in short bouts that dispersed too easily. Ephraim didn't really have his sister's ability, but still caught the meaning of his chuckles; when they were gentle conversation finishers and when they were hooks for his own sentences.  
This one had been so short; two dim open vowels ( _I can go on_ ).  
“But you have our new address and our phone number. When me and Eirika get money we'll get back.”  
“Or I could go visit you, even...”  
Ephraim hadn't really seen Lyon's father that much on that year, and since they barely ever breached the topic of money he didn't know if that was a promise or very wistful thinking. Lyon wasn't looking at him (he had a nice profile, all sharp lines and soft hair like a colorful frame, the kind you looked at briefly because it was better than gazing at it for _too_ long; even if he wouldn't say anything about it, even if he wouldn't).

***

There was an earring in the grass. Somewhat childish, with a red polished gemstone the name of which he doesn't know.  
He has a vague, sleep-like awareness of where he is (it is a place that smells of salt and dust; he felt the air tried to take something out of his memory but, but), though he didn't cross anyone going to that place. He feels like he wouldn't have asked about it even if he had.  
But there was an earring in the grass.  
He could only _almost_ place it (it shone too brightly, as if it should have been naturally obscured by something, as if that light should have been only momentary, only on the very first impression--), and it was one of the few things in his mind before he fell asleep on the bench. 

It's as if someone tried to copy Ephraim's handwriting: it comes with the tall-standing _I_ and the short _f_ , almost like a senseless scribble, the slight slant, missing all punctuation; and yet it's too round, too tidy, too perfectly aligned.  
And at first she thinks she's overthinking it, projecting, she thinks it's the silence in the house, empty like a hungry mouth, starting to take a toll on her.  
But she finds more notes. The first appeared on the shelf, near Ephraim's manuals; there's one on the kitchen counter, another near the seashell in her room, one almost slipping away to the garden.

“ _It was in the stupidest place I swear_ ”

“ _You liked them so much would be happy_ ”

“ _I think theyd still look nice on you_ ”

It's the impression of his writing and Eirika's breath catches for a moment when she finds them, her heart stops beating on the first letter and starts pumping in a rush when she gets to the last one (catches on the deliberate, weirdly crumpled space in the third one, as if someone took what was there by rubbing the paper).  
Her hands goes to her ear out of instinct, and she entangles her fingers with the golden strings of her earrings; she can see Lyon's smile, tinted with embarrassment, the way he kept his hands on his lap not really knowing what to do.

This ritual is different, and L'Arachel keeps her instructions near the table, a bunch of tidy, carefully written notes; it's more effective that way, she thinks. She dabs the brush in the little ash pile and dusts it across the necklace; the soft trail it leaves looks like the Milky Way on the dark central decoration, and she feels almost bad when she has to blow it off.  
L'Arachel thinks it will look nice on her dark yellow jersey, draped along her turtleneck. And it's protection (she wants to give back a little something, even if it will protect only her and only when she wears it; _next time I'll make something bigger_ , when she knows exactly who and what she wants to protect, when she's mastered the art).  
When she finishes with it, she puts it back on the box. It chimes and tingles all the way to Eirika's house, and her heartbeat soon matches the soft, cardboard-like thumps of it, on her ride on the bus and her short walk up the hill.  
But Eirika doesn't wait for her to open the door. She sees her, with a scarf badly tied around her neck, going to her bike on the side of the house; when she looks at her her eyes keep the spark of urgency just for a second, then they soften again, when she smiles.

Inside her there's a whirlwind of relief and fear and she knows it's getting to her face, her eyes, to the way she walks, but L'Arachel just comes to her, waving (her presence firm like an oak tree) and she smiles, and she smiles; Eirika knows a part of the relief is not having to really involve L'Arachel into her matter of dreams.  
The fear, though, the fear comes from the note she clutches in her hand (a pinprick; a _is he trying to spirit me away too_ that her confidence and her memories can't smother); and the doubt, deeply seated in a part of her, whether L'Arachel really had no involvement in it.  
It's a thing of luck, after all. Even if it's a ploy.  
The fact that she can talk freely with her loosens her words and her hands.  
“I think... I think I found something!”, she says. She leaves the bike for a moment and grabs L'Arachel like she did when she handed her the lucky coin, which still sits somewhere in her pocket. Her anxiety and her happiness bleed into her words and there's a slight change in L'Arachel's face (L'Arachel's face, slightly red). “About my brother. I know I didn't give you time to actually help as you wanted, but you did! You did help. Thank you.”  
(If her coin didn't do anything, if her spells didn't work on her, L'Arachel still kept her working).  
She notices the small box on her hand, but doesn't say anything about it and goes back to her bike.  
“Now I'm going to... to check. To solve this.”

It's too fast.  
L'Arachel likes Eirika's hands on hers (they're warm, rougher) and she thinks she should like the words too; but it all had a feeling of fantasy to it, the names without faces and the confusing wave that washed on her because Eirika was crying but she was also trusting, trusting, trusting her. Everything negative about her story becomes tangible in the creak of her bike.  
The dream walking, the dream walking. The disappearing brother.  
( _What if she disappears too?_ , the thought is like a flash of lightning, the thunder of terror striking her shortly after. Dream walking is a hidden science, nebulous at best, transmitted from faceless parents to faceless children; now it looks like an enormous wolf ready to swallow Eirika, like a sickness in the blood).  
She needs a second for each word lighting up in her mind, a couple more to stop the beaming feeling of that _thank you_ to overcome her.  
“I'm going with you”.

“I'm going with you”, she repeats. “You said you didn't give me time to help properly. Then I'm going with you.”  
Eirika stops the bike. L'Arachel stands firm like an oak (better yet, like a birch tree, with her white coat and her hair tousled by the wind).  
“I don't want you to--”  
“You already said thank you. You can't back down on that.”  
(She looks so satisfied, even with a shadow of seriousness that blooms in her eyes but doesn't reach her smile. She keeps her hands in her pockets, now, the small box hidden.)  
Eirika knows that, since she's on a bike, she could never keep her pace, if she were to speed away. That if she wants to go alone, she can do it.  
“Okay.”  
( _But she's already caught me, hasn't she_ ).

Eirika's bike is old and it creaks under their weight, and she has to sit on a little shelf built to carry baskets and boxes and not people, covered in red paint that's flaking on her coat. There's a light spark inside of her from when she accepted to let her come, and an ink bubble ready to burst and stain because of the uncertainty of their trip, but when Eirika says she has to hold on tight, L'Arachel forgets where she's going.  
(She doesn't know where she's going, she doesn't care where she's going).

When they went to the hotel, they went by car; she had read the same tourist guide over and over in the backseat until the information about festivals they had never attended and the photographs of fireworks they had never seen stayed in her mind like a lullaby melody, she paid so little attention to the text she could follow any game Ephraim came up with to try and not get bored.  
The trip by train, in comparison, feels odd, even with L'Arachel at her side, even with the biting feeling that she might be wrong at the pit of her stomach. The dust floating in the air in the station is visible through the sunshine, and even at that time of the day the place looks frozen in a sunset scene: everything is orange, yellow, soft browns and whites reflecting the red fabric of her coat. Even though L'Arachel tries to start a conversation several times, she answers with short words, with _yes_ or _no_ or _I think so_.  
( _I think so, I hope so_ ).  
She needs to take a deep breath before she steps on the train; L'Arachel gets on before she does, and offers her her hand (it's a bit of an excessive gesture, but she accepts it nonetheless).  
The train is empty. Hearing the wooden creaking of its structure, seated the leather seats, the color of rust, the words seem to unblock; it must have been something about the station, about its artificial silence only pierced by the gentle voice of the announcer.  
“Did your friend get in touch with you in any way? Or your brother?”  
There's a pause between the sentences, the kind someone makes when they regret a fraction of what they said.  
“I found notes”, she says. She kept them in her pocket, but both the writing and the paper itself seem to get thinner the more she thinks about them, the more she questions them. “I'm... not sure who wrote them. I don't know how his magic works exactly, you know. But if this was how he got Ephraim then... I guess I'll find him, and we'll work something out together.”  
(There's a moment where she thinks _and you're with me too_ , but she shouldn't involve her more, she shouldn't, if Lyon does something to her she won't forgive him, or herself; thinking about Lyon like that is still too violent and makes her words dig deeper, to the bone: 'This was how he got Ephraim').  
“Wait, you said notes? Did he go into your house?”  
“No, it's... He can make small... changes from his dreams, when we were younger he would take seashells out of the sea, or hide things so we could search for them during the day. But he said he needed us. He needed us to believe he could do it. It's like...”  
“It's nothing like your tea or my charms.”  
There's a strange undertone in L'Arachel's voice, not exactly scared, and her smile has twisted a bit. 

When Eirika starts comparing their magic to her friend's, it's as if she spilled oil on her, sticky and hard to wash. It's almost like a transgression; in a way, like stepping on a sacred ground that belongs to selected families.

In winter, the town by the sea is empty. Their steps echo in the station, too big for some months, and even the open shops look on stand-by, the routine that fits every other city like a stormy cloud on those houses.  
Eirika looks at the paper detailing the timetables of the minibus that goes to the hotel.  
What's left of it are scraps of white with grayed out lettering, covered in portions by other pieces of paper, strapped out in some points. For a second she wonders what did she get wrong, but she went to that bus stop straight from the station, not even looking at the streets; even after more than a year, even if she didn't consciously remember, her body knows the directions.  
“That hotel went out of business a while ago, lady”, a man tells them from a restaurant entrance. “Weird to still see people looking for the minibus.”  
“Did anyone else check for it lately?”  
(Her voice comes too high; L'Arachel squeezes her hand and she can feel the weight of the notes slowly disappearing in her pocket).  
“Well, a couple asked for it two days ago... they had this outdated guide, it seems. A shame it close, though, it was really a nice place.”  
“Just the couple?”  
“Yeah, as far as I know.”  
She thanks him with a strained smile and turns to L'Arachel. She talks to her in a whisper, but there's a spark of hope, deep deep like the ocean, beating inside her like a drum.  
“We'll have to walk a bit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characterizing Lyon and Ephraim in this was a nightmare. They appear really little, but I didn't want them to feel like plot devices or something, so I added the tiny flashbacks at the start... And I hope they don't feel too tacked on. I also had another thing in mind with them, but I'm not revealing what :x
> 
> This chapter is sort of bridge-y, like the second one, but I hope it's okay! 
> 
> Thanks for reading as always!


	10. The seaside hotel

***

He felt something biting at his eyelids like a needle.

***

The hotel is a mass of chalk at the end of the way, at the top of a small hill like her house; unlike her house, it towers, it looks older than it is, with its white walls and arcades and rectangular windows like heavy-lidded eyes. It's almost all straight lines, lonely and away from the city like an ancient building.  
And it ages the closer they get to it (for a second Eirika wishes she hadn't left her bike at the station back home, but the sunset light hits one of the curves in the way to the hotel and she flinches; this is dangerous, it's childish but it's so rooted inside her); blots of faded yellow and brown bite chunks out of the white paint, and the grass along the way, which she remembers soft and nicely kept, grows wild and full of thistle.  
Time seemed to freeze when they went there, and now it looks as if all the quiet hours have jumped into the building at the same time. The disrepair is too apparent, too much, almost clashing against windows that don't look broken, just dusty; how did the glass survive whatever has been tearing down the walls?  
(From time to time she stops looking at the hotel and gazes at L'Arachel, right beside her. She's calmingly out of place, a correction in the aged lines of the road).

Somewhere along the road the grass becomes taller and less green, and the air bristles up; suddenly, L'Arachel feels like she's taking deep breaths in the rain, like there's something thick and liquid floating.  
But Eirika doesn't say anything, and if she's noticed the change too she doesn't show it.  
All in all she believes it to be a good sign, in a way, an indication that they're near: they're looking for something, someone who in her mind looks really vague and dark, a silhouette under a heavy veil, a dream walker that must be making changes to the waking world. The small droplets she feels she's breathing up send a chill down her spine, though, and she swallows to dilute them inside her.  
(It doesn't really feel like rain; it's inky, heavy, bitter when she pays attention to it).  
Eirika stops at the entrance arcade.  
Inside the garden of the hotel, full of flowers and plants with too high stalks, there is a bench. On the bench, there is a man.  
The atmosphere after the arcade is almost crushing, heavy with magic ( _she was right, she was right!_ ), but when Eirika dashes to the man in the bench (she yells a name, her voice breaks in the second syllable but she doesn't cry) L'Arachel is hit by the strangeness of twins: magic, even when it flickers like a black spot around the walls, is something she knows well, but there are two identical faces so close to each other now, one framed by long hair and the other marked with a shadow of stubble.

She and Ephraim never hugged that much, but the shape of him fits against hers and she wishes he would lift his arms to her back ( _I need it this time, I really do_ ; usually it's the other way around, with an angry, defeated tone in the way he hangs his coat or sits on the couch).  
But he's sleeping, he keeps his hands tightly closed. When she gets back to look at him better, she can see the slight fluttering of his eyes behind his eyelids and she instantly turns to the building. There's something that tugs her heart, something that's been doing that since she set foot on the way to the hotel, but she sees L'Arachel in the corner of her eye.  
(Eirika realizes she got used to the soft curves of her face and arms, the wavy way she moved around, and the amount of straight lines in her now make her look like a cut-up piece of paper; and yet, she talks, _I am so glad to have you here_ , she speaks with a strong, unwavering tone).  
“Are you okay?”  
The implication of a plural.  
Her hands slide from Ephraim's shoulders to his fingers. He's holding something (her earring, her missing earring, like a shiny piece of the past, _it must be hurting him_ ), and she remembers the small box L'Arachel is still carrying.  
“I think so, he's just... he's just sleeping. I don't want to risk waking him up, though.” A pause where she takes a decision. “Not yet.”  
She's ready for the conversation she predicts, but watching L'Arachel's smile wane in her silence is still prickly.  
“I need you to stay here with him. I'm going to find Lyon.”  
_I won't let you go alone_ , _Please take me with you_ , she waits for those with bittersweet bated breath, but she takes her time to answer, her expression now completely serious.  
“I'll give you half an hour. If you're not here by then, I'll go find you.” the smile goes back to her lips, slightly different, a small flash of her teeth when she finishes. “I'll go find you _both_.”  
The sound of her heart goes louder and louder when she speaks, almost explodes with the sly little both (a word that followed all her life but hasn't lost any of its original weight), she can barely hear her own words when she stands up away from her brother and faces L'Arachel properly.  
“Thanks again.”  
( _I hope you have to, I hope you don't_ ).

The necklace is still on her hands like an iron ball; maybe she should have left it back home, inside the basket of Eirika's bike, because she needs her hands free. She leaves the small box beside Eirika's brother.  
She catches her wrist (the skin at the bottom of her palm is cold, and when she turns around her hair is like a cloud around her, the soft color of it evolving her) and kisses her.  
On the cheek, at first, as if asking for permission, somewhat doubtful even after the momentary hesitation after she turned around, but also full to the brim with the need to feel her skin; there's a sense of urgency in the way Eirika tilts her head and L'Arachel thinks she can only touch her with her lips now, her hands frozen in place, when she takes a step back Eirika looks redder, her colors more alive.  
“This is for luck.”  
( _Then it should have been shorter_ , she half-chastises herself, but Eirika flashes her a surprised smile).  
When she gets inside the hotel, L'Arachel sits down on the bench, slightly dizzy. Eirika's brother seems to look even more like her now, as if he had absorbed her colors in the meantime; for some reason that reminds her of the steam-like air around her.

The world after the entrance door is different. Something about it takes badly to the delicate burning in her mouth and her accelerated pulse, she can feel it; there's a vague shape, a piece of night sky cut up to look like a person who stares at her in the hall, its gaze judgmental, as if she had brought a forbidden item into the hotel. Apart from that, everything looks shapeless and foggy, like a movement-blurred photograph, disconcerting and unclear; and yet there's an unsettling sense of familiarity in it, her body knows the steps and where she must go.  
It's the first room on the third floor, to the right. The stairs creak when she goes up them and she gets a feeling like a horrible trembling that they might give up under her (when she tries to look and be sure of where she's stepping, they become unfocused, her feet sinking in a swirl of brown and blue and white). On the corridor, there are only two doors, surrounded by a wall that seems to go on forever. The numbers on them (14, 15, awfully clear) shine invitingly.

He can hear the door opening. It doesn't click or whine; it just glides, wood on wood, even if the hinges should be ruined by now. Even if he didn't take that as a signal, as a message as _congratulations_ , he would have turned.  
The shape on the door glows and he recognizes it immediately. He's not sure why his eyes widen or if they truly widen or if they're open _how am I seeing her?_ He expected it to be Ephraim, actually, since he's been so close so close so close and for so long he almost can see inside him but she's more tangible than Ephraim, always has, in the dreams at least, a black outline with cracks as blinding as direct sunlight, but she's all open now, a star, a star.

Eirika suddenly notices the heat, the heat seeping through her heavy clothes like melted snow.  
Lyon is the most defined entity in the room, sitting at the edge of the shape of a bed and wearing his airy shirt and his sandals even though it's winter outside, even though it's getting dark outside; when she thinks about the world out of the walls of the hotel, he moves like a tree in a windstorm.  
Particular parts of him move; where the shirts ends, something black clings to his skin like a piece of charcoal, enormous masses of burned wood in the shape of arms, and they pulsate with the words forming in her mind: cold, night, L'Arachel. The clawed fingers move a bit, knuckles dragging on the floor.  
Her throat dries and closes but she manages to speak.  
“Lyon. I'm here to help you.”  
“Why didn't you do it when I asked? This is not what I wanted you to do. I don't need you here.”  
His voice is marbled, some words are mottled with a lighter, higher tone, and then deepen suddenly; hearing him is like walking on the sea and taking a misstep into a pit. She can still feel the tug at her heart, something searching inside her.  
“This can't be... Can't you see where you are and what you did? What did you want Ephraim for, since- since when have you been--”  
“Not here, I don't\- I don't need you. Here.” 

She sounds angry and anguished and he can't find anything about her, anything of what he needs, a disperse memory or anything _why doesn't anyone remember_ remember him, he finds only scarce traces that don't amount to anything: hair color, the way he barely laughed, an image of him ruffling his hair. Not even him can see him as before because Ephraim's bled into him and affected his vision that's why she's so bright and the reason for that strange house he saw with the small kitchen and the bells on the room. This is not what he wants.  
_Bring him back_ this was supposed to bring him back, he reaches out to her he ne _eds you to understand_

Lyon's shape dissipates a bit around the edges, the room eating him up, submerging them both in a cloud between dreams and the waking world; Eirika, Eirika sees his charcoal hand extending to him like an ink spill in the air and she notices the tea vapor floating out of her ( _but I'm not my mother, I'm not mom, this won't work_ , there's a part of her that's still thinking about that gesture as the prelude of a caress, claws and all, and another that can't stop thinking about the people outside sitting on the bench, on the ruined garden).  
Then she feels something pulling at her clothes from behind, a cry.

He hears something snapping and the sound of glass marbles and metal pieces falling on the floor and rolling, and then an unknown presence so immense, so towering and awake; it's incredibly earthly, a sensation like the toll of a bell. Like waking up because your body forgot to keep on breathing: Lyon opens his eyes and sees two vague shapes amid the woolly cloud of vapor that smells of lavender and chamomile and looks like a white tiger ready to jump on him. The first thing he remembers is the face of his father, a memory like swallowing a knife, and the warmth of his tears reminds him that he has a body; for a very long time he forgot, he forgot, his body was something he had to keep in mind but not something inextricably his. His body was little more than a painful anchor but now there's a hand on his.  
( _I'm hungry, I'm cold_ ).

Perfumed steam comes out of every window and door of the hotel, enveloping the building and the garden in a cleansing mantle; Ephraim wakes up slowly and feels at home, on that cold bench, a bit disoriented but at home. He tugs on his coat when the chilly night air nips at the nape of his neck.  
And then he sees his sister.  
(His sister is carrying Lyon through the fog, Lyon who has his arms around himself because he's in summer clothing, as if someone had pulled him out of a summer photograph, Lyon, Lyon; there's another woman with them but his anger is too focused).  
“You! You, how _dare_ you--”  
His voice comes out rugged and rusty, and makes him doubt his own words. Lyon looks up at him, the circles under his eyes so dark they look almost painted on, and Eirika opens her mouth but doesn't say anything.  
It's the silence, the silence is crushing. He's not good with words anyway; he hugs them both hard enough for them to complain while they cling to him, Lyon's pale hands curling around his shoulders, Eirika's clutching what they can of his coat.  
(There's a constant murmur, a _sorry sorry sorry sorry_ that's enough for the moment).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Was this your favorite part to write?" Why yes. Yes it was. It has everything I enjoy writing, except Ephraim, who has like three lines of dialogue in the whole thing and I overthought them all.
> 
> The hotel is (surprisingly!) not really based around anything I know. It has some vague elements of this... spa of sorts... I went to when I was little, but now it's mostly a restaurant with a pool. I took the garden and the arcades from it, but nothing else - I wanted the interior to be foggy for me too.
> 
> Thanks for reading up until this! Just one update to go!


	11. Back home

***

Lyon's father died of something that had kept him (his broad shoulders, his strong voice) on a hospital bed for months, almost a year. Lyon stated it almost matter-of-factly, even if there was a slight wavering in his voice; this they would truly not understand, so there was no need to try and use some words that would have raked his vocal chords as if they were metallic and sharp. In a fit of desperation, he had tried to take back the pieces of him he might have left on people's memories, he had tried to make small changes in the only place of the world that felt inviting anymore. Pull him closer, pry him closer, move him from dream to reality like he did with those seashells.  
The first day, he says, the first day in the hotel he slept so soundly.  
Eirika waited inside while he and Ephraim burned some of his notes on dream walking on their backyard (the especially bad ones, the ones he couldn't recover from the basics, the ones he could afford, he had to get out of his sight). Later, Ephraim told her how he looked. He held a black book in his hands, something Lyon wanted him to keep in his stead.   
“Like the hotel”, he said.  
When they left it, she saw the walls were only a bit dusty, the grass in the garden just slightly overgrown.

***

L'Arachel puts the necklace back together on her own. She can't charm it again, or use the pieces she had to leave back in the hotel after breaking it to unbind the spell she had placed: she felt the snap of the ash that kept it in place on her very bones, her power swirling out of her and into Eirika's magic.  
She didn't wait for the discussed time to pass, she dashed to the hotel when she felt a violent bout of _something_ , something sad and invisible, pushing against her very bones. And yet it was brittle, and she could feel it shattering because of her presence when she rushed upstairs; that was what gave her the strength to pull the chain in the necklace apart: the pieces of another person's spell falling around her, her body like bitter, necessary medicine.  
(She somewhat wishes she could do it again; yet routines and domesticity, made of hands on her hair and kisses on her doorstep, are like warm milk).  
When she comes to her house, Eirika looks at her handywork but barely makes any comments. She buys a sundress that will look nice with it (a dare, a joking jab). When it's finished, she wears it with a pair of earrings that would look better on a teenager but bring out a secret color in her eyes.

She keeps L'Arachel's coin. Sometimes, however, when she's not looking, she places it under her (their) pillow.  
Sweet dreams, sweet dreams now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we're done :D
> 
> This is my second longest fanfic and I'm superhappy with it! It's also the first time I write a short story like this, though, with a plot I mean. I borrowed stuff (I mean, it is fanfic) but I had to come up with some things myself. I'm proud of myself `u´
> 
> Special thanks go to Colette who asked for this!! I think it started on a silly tumblr meme but I'm so glad it blossomed into this! I hope you liked it <333
> 
> Of course, I hope you all liked it too! Thanks for reading this to the end!


End file.
